


All I Want to Get is a Little Bit Closer (Can You Come a Little Closer?)

by kikitheslayer



Category: Veep
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, F/F, Lesbian Character, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 02:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7295623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikitheslayer/pseuds/kikitheslayer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or: 10 Steps to Loving Women and Yourself as the First Daughter of the United States of America</p>
            </blockquote>





	All I Want to Get is a Little Bit Closer (Can You Come a Little Closer?)

1:

It doesn’t take long to realize that your life is different. Other kids’ mommies and daddies are nurses and teachers, construction workers and journalists. Your mother is a United States senator. Your father is a captain of industry. You live in a mansion and you have maids and money and opportunity and there are _rules_.

Your class schedule is not yours to pick. Your friend group has to be vetted.

You watch Disney movies the way other kids read the Brothers Grimm, like cautionary tales. You know to allow yourself get caught up in the fantasy is only to risk disappointment later.

Unlike Ariel, if you abandon this kingdom, there will not be another one waiting for you beyond the waves.

2:

Your mother wants to be president. You follow along, preening. You campaign to the kids at school. You wear jumpers and practice smiling and attend her campaign events. You act like a saint, the perfect future first daughter. (And of course it’s still not enough -- you still fall off the stage. You’re still a laughing stock.)

Your mom’s campaign manager makes a decision. They want to shoot a video in your home, something to show off her softer, motherly side. They want to show everyone in America your room.

You sit in silence, picking at your tights, while your mother and a team of her campaign staff sweep over your room with a fine-tooth comb. She picks at the books on your shelves, pulling off titles and stacking them into Amy’s arms to be hidden until the campaign is over. She leaves _The Miseducation of Cameron Post_ , but takes away a number of other titles: _Ash_ , _Annie on My Mind_. You notice the pattern.

They take the posters of girls of your walls, too -- the actresses, the popstars. They replace them with posters of inspirational women in black and white: Marie Curie, Mary Shelley.

You’re not an idiot. You know what they’re implying. You hang a poster of Sally Ride above your bed. It feels like rebellion. You all pretend it isn’t.

3: 

You don’t have many friends. They all think you’re weird. The quiet rich girl who always says the wrong thing and is flanked by big men in black suits.

There’s this one girl, though, your junior year. She’s your lab partner. She has wavy brown hair and glasses and she makes jokes in a voice so low that only you can hear.

Amazingly, not even your mother can find something wrong with her.

You stay the night at her house once. You’re sprawled over her couch watching some sitcom that she likes, munching on popcorn and drinking the really unhealthy soda that your mother never buys. Her knee bumps yours and you look up. You meet her eyes.

She leans in, and you can tell in an instant what it will be like. She’ll be soft, her skin warm under your fingertips. Her lips will taste salty.

You wait to duck your head until the last moment, until you can feel her warm breath on your face. Then, once it’s almost happened, but not quite, you shy away. “I’m sorry,” you whisper. You stand up and grab your things, and you don’t turn around, can’t look at her. You close your eyes. You keep your voice quiet, almost not there at all. “I have to go.”

She doesn’t say anything, but you know she understands.

You go home early. When your mother asks, you scream at her, slam your bedroom door. She doesn’t know why. You don’t either, you tell yourself, because you didn’t want it. You repeat it over and over until it sounds true. You didn’t want it. You may cradle the memory close to your heart, but you didn't want it.

4:

You go to college, and it’s supposed to be different. You’re supposed to feel like your own person there, away from D.C., away from your mother. But the secret service agents tailing you are still there, always in the corner of your vision. You write an essay and the press tears it apart, and you realize you haven’t escaped anything at all.

5:

It takes some time, but there is something different. It isn’t your dorm, or your classes, or that you no longer live in that same gaping, lonely home. Something has changed inside of you. All of the anger and resentment that has been building for the past eighteen years spills over, and you’re left with a heart that beats too fast and an entire wasted youth to make up for. You get a boyfriend, because he calls you “pretty” and you can picture your mom’s face as she tries to be okay with it. You go to ragers, and you vape behind buildings with people you don’t really like, and you study dance because you’re just so goddamn tired of everyone trying to blow each other up all the time.

6:

You break up with that boy, and it doesn’t really matter. There are lots of boys who want to date the pretty, rich first daughter. Sure, there are the ones who ask for nudes on the first date, or want to watch you pee, or think the two biggest causes of hurricanes are feminism and your mother. But nothing feels better than when they smile at you, than when they say they want you. It means that you’re worth something. It’s everything you’ve ever learned to want.

Jason proposes, and you feel on top of the world. Who cares that he’s in his mid-thirties? Who cares that you don’t love him? You weren’t raised to hold out for love. It’s perfect, anyway, because this means that there’s someone out there who likes you enough to marry you. That’s the dream, right?

7:

You break up with him. It’s an easy decision. Your mother’s career has always come first. It always will. For all that you fight, at least you actually love her.

You don’t feel anything except vaguely relieved. You wonder if there’s something wrong with you.

8:

You have ten thousand things to focus on. You have your mom’s campaign, your thesis project, friend drama, and a new skincare routine. But all that ever seems to be in your head these days is her face. It pops up without warning: her silky hair, the smiles that apparently only you can see.

There’s something special about her, you just know it. You want to be her best friend. You want to braid her hair, and listen to her problems, and fall asleep next to her.

You ask for an interview. She asks you to dinner. Your heart leaps for a moment.

You suddenly wonder if you’re being mean, leading her on, being one of those annoying straight girls who just wants to experiment. (You know she’s gay. You may have lightly Facebook stalked her.)

She looks surprised, but says she understands, and you make dinner plans anyway. Your heart is still leaping, and you let it.

9:

Dinner is perfect. She’s perfect. She’s hilarious, and gorgeous, and it’s like she says everything you’re thinking. At the end of the night, she pulls in front of your apartment, waits for you to get out.

You don’t. You don’t want the night to end.

In a rush, you get it. You understand why your favorite movie is _Imagine Me and You_ , and why your ex-boyfriends never fit right, and why you can’t stop thinking in exaggerated metaphors about how Marjorie’s hair looks in the moonlight.

It’s like you’re sixteen again.

And suddenly you are so, so tired of waiting.

“Cath--” she starts, her eyes flicking down your face.

You cut her off, kissing her, wanting to make up for lost time.

You are angry at everything outside the car, but it doesn’t matter. It’s like that whole world doesn’t even exist, the only true things are Marjorie’s lips, and her blush in the yellow car ceiling lights, and the graze of her hand over your hip through the dress that everyone always said made you look like a lesbian anyway.

10:

You wake up in your bed, the sunlight filtering through your windows, illuminating her face, soft and sleepy and bunched up among your cotton sheets.

You kiss her, and everything in your life just makes sense.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Closer" by Tegan and Sara.


End file.
